//------------------------------// // First Encounters of the Weird Kind // Story: Eight Out of Hell // by The card holder //------------------------------// Today was perfect outdoors weather in Ponyville. Everypony was out of their homes, enjoying the day by spending it with their friends and family members. Twilight and her friends were also enjoying the pleasant weather, their picnic in the park just now starting. “Ahh! What a beautiful day!” Rarity said while looking to the sky, spotting the odd pegasus flying around. “Yes, it’s… nice,” Fluttershy agreed. “Alright, girls. I brought some sandwiches to share, some muffins, enough tea…” Twilight paused in her taking of inventory to see Pinkie smiling at her. “Pinkie, what did you bring?” she asked her pink friend. “Oh! I brought something neat! Check it out!” Pinkie gave Twilight a small basket with some bumps on the cover. The unicorn took off the cover, only to reveal some balloons tied to the basket. “Surprise! Isn’t that neat?” Pinkie jumped in front of Twilight. “Yes, Pinkie. It’s neat to see that you lost another basket.” Twilight deadpanned to Pinkie, watching the basket fly higher into the sky. Suddenly, the basket fell onto the head of a certain blue pegasus. “Hey! What happened?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking to the sky. “Oops! Sorry!” A grey pegasus apologized, flying down to talk with the six friends. “Derpy! What’s wrong with you?” Suddenly, other two ponies got out from the bushes. They had bruises and they seemed very tired and frightened, just like Derpy hovering just above them. “Oh, by Celestia! Lyra, Octavia! What happened to you?” Rarity exclaimed, fretting over the state both their manes were in. Derpy landed next to the worrying unicorn. “It was horrible! There were these things! It was like—oh, hey! Muffins!” she said, spotting the pastry in question, and took one and chewed it vigorously. The group only sighed at the sight. “Could anypony be more specific?” Applejack asked to the other two. “Well… as Derpy started to explain, we were enjoying our day, doing a picnic near the river,” Octavia began. “We were chatting and laughing, when suddenly… something… a creature we haven’t seen before appeared before us!” “A creature? What did it look like?” Twilight asked them. “Well…” Lyra answered, “it had these… things… somehow like Spike’s claws, but they weren’t claws… they had naked skin on them… “ “Alright.” Twilight said at the time she grabbed a piece of paper and started to draw something. “It also had a pair of legs. It didn’t was like ours. It had only one knee on each leg.” “Mmhmm.” “And his head… it didn’t had a nuzzle like us. Instead, it seemed flat. Except for his nose.” “And his mane wasn’t large, it was cut in a guard-like style,” Octavia added. “It also had sunglasses.” Twilight murmured something to herself, still drawing in the piece of paper. A few moments later, she turned over the drawing to show it to the others. “It was something like this?” In the drawing, they saw the first creature perfectly drawn to match their description. “Yes… It was almost exactly like that… at least that one.” “That one? What… do you mean there are more than ONE of these things?” “We could count eight of them.” The six ponies stood in there like that for a while. “So… what about these creatures?” Rarity asked after a while. “Do you think they are-“ “Dangerous? I don’t think so. Or at the very least, they’re somewhat friendly, in retrospect...” “What makes you say that, Lyra?” “Weeeell, when we first saw them, we kiiinda… ran away screaming.” Twilight nodded. “Mmhmm. And after that?” In the forest, the eight fighters approached what looked like the edge of said forest. BJ was breathing heavily from exhaustion. “Hey, Cyber. You sure your sensors pointed to this direction?” he asked the cyborg. “My sensors are well-calibrated to locate any source of life in a ratio of 50 light-years.” “In English, please.” “I can find living things really well.” “I wouldn’t doubt Cyber’s capacity for guidance. He has proven to be quite the trustful navigator,” Corvus assured the soldier. “Yeah, but… anyone can make mistakes. Right?” “Look, I don’t care what we find,” Marine said, “as long as it has something there. Killing a fucking dragon from the inside was the highlight of my day, but I don’t want to spend the rest of it wandering around, looking for keys, nudging every possible wall, or any of that bullshit.” The others agreed wholeheartedly with his sentiments, especially BJ. “Just what kind of architect makes literally every room look the same, then hides secret passages in one of them, but not the rest?” As they continued to complain about erratic architecture, Ranger soon held up a fist, stopping the group. “What’s up?” Duke asked, just about through with yet another cigar. “I see what looks like a settlement ahead.” Sure enough, some distance from the tree line was a small town of sorts. A pair of binoculars was passed between the group, and they saw that it was full of more of those “ponies”. “God, it’s like something out of a little girl’s cartoon,” Marine commented. “Regardless, tis civilization,” Parias said. “How I yearn for a pint or two of mead, or the like.” “I could stand to get liquored up, myself,” Chex said. “It’s the only way I can tolerate you people.” “Now, now, Chex, I’m sure you’ll find a nice Fruit Loops piece someday.” This nearly made the group burst out laughing. Even the normally-stoic Cyber cracked a grin. “Duke?” “What, Chex?” “Do I need to remind you about how you took forever?” “What do you mean-” The meaning behind Chex’s words sank in at that moment. But before the two could start a fist fight (and it wouldn’t be the first time), BJ spotted something. “Hey, guys, I think I see those ponies we saw earlier.” After everyone got a confirming look through the binoculars, they too saw the three ponies from the clearing. They were talking to a group of six other ponies, one of which had both wings and a horn. This didn’t go unnoticed. “Wings and a horn?” Corvus asked. “Is she special?” “I-dunno, but it looks like she’s listening to them about something…” As Marine studied the other ponies, suddenly the pink one looked in his direction and cracked a smile and waved. This was unnoticed by the other ponies. “What the… does she see us?” “Does who see us?” Ranger asked. “That pink one, there. I swear she just waved at me…” By now the pink one’s waving was noticed by the nearby orange one, who looked to be asking her friend a question. The pink one pointed in their direction again, this time getting the attention of the other eight. Ranger grew uneasy, but he was convinced that they couldn’t be seen at that distance, hiding in the tree line like they were. Unless, of course, they used a telescope. Like the one that the purple one just picked up with some sort of levitation spell and brought to her eye, aimed straight at the eight warriors. The sudden surprise on her face told them all they needed to know. “Welp, looks like we’re spotted,” Marine said, putting away the binoculars. “How do you guys want to go about this? Diplomacy, running, or murder everything?” “Murdering everything can only bring us so far,” Chex said simply. “Hey, it’s worked for just about everything else.” “Because almost everything so far has tried to kill us.” “Details, details.” “Regardless, I still think diplomacy is the best course of action,” Chex said, crossing his arms. Marine groaned. “Fine, we can not kill everything this one time. But the moment they start trying to grind our bones into bread or some shit, I’m rippin’ their guts.” “Fair enough.” With everyone in agreement, all that was left was to decide how to go about this. Simply walk in like they own the place, or just wait and see if the ponies come to them. Their answer came in the form of Duke cracking his knuckles, calling the others a bunch of wusses, and striding forward from the trees. Realizing he’d probably have to follow close behind so any potential relations don’t get ruined by a “clever” quip from his musclebound comrade, Chex followed close behind, looking noticeably less confident in his steps. The other six just shrugged and followed, watching as ponies soon dropped everything and stared at them. None of them ran away, perhaps because they were equal parts scared, confused, and curious. And why wouldn’t they be, when eight strange creatures walked into town, all of whom look like they’ve been to Hell and back (which, funnily enough, they have, multiple times). Soon, they were approaching the purple winged unicorn, who was just as shocked as the others, perhaps even more so because they walked right towards her and stopped right in front of her. “You in charge here?” Duke asked, his voice making the ponies shrink back in fear. Slowly, Twilight nodded. “Alright, good. Now, mind telling us just where the fuck we are?” “What my colleague means to ask,” Chex said, trying to prevent any hostilities, “is, where are we, at the moment?” It took a second for Twilight to register that she was being asked a question. “P- Ponyville.” Behind them, Marine started chuckling, only to be silenced by an elbow from BJ. “What? That’s name’s so stupid!” he whispered, just quiet enough that the ponies didn’t hear. “And what country are we in?” Chex continued. “Equestria,” Twilight said, watching the eight things like they might suddenly start attacking. “And the planet?” This got the princess to raise an eyebrow. “Earth…?” “Why are so many parallel worlds still called ‘Earth’?” Corvus asked quietly from the back, receiving a shrug from Ranger next to him. This time, it was Twilight who had the question. “What exactly… are you all?” “For the love of God, this is taking too long,” Marine suddenly said, scaring all of the ponies in the area. “We’re humans, we kill bad shit, we got lost, yadda yadda.” “Marine,” Chex began, “would you please just-” “Oh, can it, you space hopping cereal piece!” Before the two could start lunging at each other’s throat, a loud voice suddenly shouted, “Quiet!” All activity stopped, as the eight humans and numerous ponies all looked at the source of the shout: a yellow pegasus that, as soon as she noticed all the attention on her, did her best attempt at disappearing into thin air via extreme compression. Silence reigned for a little while longer, before Duke loudly stomped out his cigar and said, “Well, he pretty much summed it up.” And then pandemonium broke out. All at once, the gathered ponies began screaming and running away, causing a massive tidal wave of bodies to surge through the streets, running away from the eight creatures that now were a lot more threatening. By the time everypony was indoors, all that was left in the park were the eight humans, and nine ponies, including the purple one. “...Well that went well,” BJ said. “Look, can we go somewhere else to discuss all this?” Ranger asked. “My feet are killing me.” “They’d probably feel better if you stop that rocket jumping bullshit,” Marine snarked. Twilight, who was still taking all of this in, could only nod as she almost mechanically led the eight ponies and eight humans towards her library home. Whatever was happening, it was just too good a day for this shit.